Summary
Transcript
Americans are currently focused on the southern border. What’s happening down there? I think in that sense, Americans are finally beginning to wake up to something that I and others have been talking about for years. That’s a good thing. But they’re not too terribly concerned about the Israelis and what they do until, of course, we are drawn into war in the region. That’s another matter entirely, and we’re very close to that.
We’ll get to that in just a moment. Is Israel no longer feared by other Middle eastern state actors? I think that the Middle east, its elites, certainly the governments of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Lebanon, no doubt they all want to avoid a regional war. They want to avoid it because they know what the damage will be to their infrastructure. They know the consequences for their populations, and I think they fear their removal.
But the point is that events are moving to that precipice of removing them as it is. The populations in the region, the Muslim Arabs in particular, and the Turks, I would say, are very close to it, are so angry and so enraged. They’re ready to fight regardless of what the costs are to destroy Israel. I think this is something everybody misses. Mr. Netanyahu, in my judgment, was wrong when he said destroying Hamas and removing the population in Gaza was an existential requirement for the state of Israel.
I don’t think it was. I think he could have scaled back his objectives and achieved a degree of security that could have been infinitely better than what already exists. There were things that could be done. That’s gone now. .